Plenty of concessions

Your news article “Labour dispute continues” talks about the letter that CUPE workers delivered to our mayor and council at their October 6 meeting.

In our letter to council we talked about our key priorities of job security and fair wages, but our main concern was to set the record straight.

The City’s October 3 statement wrongly said that the mediator’s recommendations included no concessions. There are some very serious concessions on the table that would limit our union’s ability to properly represent our members when disputes arise.

This is a major concession and it has been a major stumbling block to achieving an agreement.

We also expressed concern about the lack of respect that city management has shown to our union. And we wanted to make sure that council understood our issues.

We are very disappointed that no resolution came out of the latest round of mediated talks, but we are committed to continue to work to find agreement.

Castlegar city workers are very proud of what we do to keep our community a safe and great place to live and work. CUPE 2262 will work hard to try to get an agreement at the bargaining table and we hope that our Mayor and Council will commit to do the same, despite the rocky road that we have been on.

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